Nevada Casinos Say They’ll Boot You For Being High

Another day, another cannabis regulation tweak. The Nevada Gaming Association has revised their rules regarding intoxicated persons and gambling. For a long time now the commission has frowned on intoxicated gambling and forbid casinos from letting “visibly impaired” people gambled. The spirit of the regulation hasn’t changed, but the letter has, and now the commission explicitly says that patrons high on drugs (including the recently state-legalized cannabis) cannot partake in the casinos’ gaming.

“It’s not smart to allow impaired people to gamble,” NGA Chairman Tony Alamo told Vegas’s Fox 5 News, ignoring that many casinos give free alcohol to gamblers precisely because they think it’s very smart to allow inotixcated people to gamble. “Previously, we used the words ‘intoxication,’ and intoxication sometimes gives the feeling of just alcohol … We want to make it crystal-clear across the board under all regulations that ‘impairment’ is not just alcohol; it’s being impaired by drugs.”

Alamo went through the trouble of explaining that the vote to change the regulations has nothing to do with the recent change in Nevada cannabis law, only because the times they are a-changing.

“Decades ago, you would never think that anybody who was impaired was from anything but alcohol,” Alamo, who has obviously never seen the movies Casinoor Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas said.

“Not anymore. Society changes, Las Vegas changes and we change with it.” So if you want to gamble after visiting a dispensary, you better bring some Visine with you.